Stanford hires Johnny Dawkins as basketball coach

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Johnny Dawkins, 44, is a former Duke star who has served on the Blue Devils’ coaching staff since 1998. He replaces Trent Johnson, the Pacific-10 Conference coach of the year who left this month for Louisiana State after leading the Cardinal to the Sweet 16.

More than two weeks after Pacific-10 Conference coach of the year Trent Johnson left for Louisiana State, Stanford turned to one of college basketball’s premier programs for his replacement.

Johnny Dawkins, an assistant under Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski the past 11 seasons, was handed the keys to the Stanford program Saturday. He will be introduced at a news conference Monday.

“We are thrilled to welcome Johnny and his family to Stanford,” Athletic Director Bob Bowlsby said in a statement. “His credentials as a player, combined with his coaching experience gained mentoring under a Hall of Fame coach at a university such as Duke, made him a perfect fit for Stanford.”

But the hire seems to fit the model Bowlsby followed with Cardinal football coach Jim Harbaugh. Both Dawkins and Harbaugh are former pro athletes with a resume that generates headlines and excites recruits.

“I really don’t know a lot about Johnny Dawkins,” said Jeremy Green, one of Stanford’s two incoming freshmen. “But as far as what he’s helped Coach K do at Duke, I’m very excited for what he’s going to be able to do at Stanford.”

Dawkins scored a then-school record 2,556 points while at Duke and led the Blue Devils to the 1986 NCAA final.After being drafted 10th overall by the San Antonio Spurs in 1986, the guard spent nine seasons in the NBA with San Antonio, Philadelphia and Detroit.

Dawkins returned to his alma mater in 1996 as an administrative intern in the athletic department. He spent the past nine seasons as Krzyzewski’s associate head coach.In recent years, Dawkins had been linked to coaching openings at Ohio State, Temple and Georgetown. When Krzyzewski flirted with the Los Angeles Lakers in summer 2004, Dawkins was thought to be the front-runner to replace Krzyzewski in Durham.

“In my 28 years at Duke, no one did more to build our program as a player, coach or a person than Johnny Dawkins,” Krzyzewski said in a statement. “He is as responsible as anyone for the success we’ve had for more than two decades.

“Johnny is certainly ready to become a head coach at a high level, and that is exactly the opportunity he’s been presented. He will identify completely with what Stanford does, both in the classroom and on the court, and will maintain its strong basketball tradition. This is a great fit for both Stanford and Johnny.”

What remains to be seen is how Dawkins adapts to the differences at Stanford. Despite the sterling academic reputations of the two schools, Stanford basketball and Duke basketball are not the same:

• The Blue Devils run the show in Durham, while athletics aren’t a priority on The Farm.

• Duke’s operating budget is almost twice that of Stanford’s ($1.6 million to $900,000), according to federal government figures.

• As a destination program for McDonald’s All-Americans, the Blue Devils rarely take the court with lesser personnel than their opponents. Yet Stanford rarely has comparable talent to the top teams in the Pac-10 or NCAA tournament opposition.

“At Stanford, you have to know how to do more with less,” one coach explained recently.

• Perhaps the greatest difference between the programs is the admissions standards: Duke’s are much more lenient, according to the most-recent figures available from the NCAA.

The average high school GPA of a Duke basketball player is 3.13, compared to Stanford’s 3.46. And the average SAT score of Duke players is 968, compared to Stanford’s 1123.

“I hope (Dawkins) knows what he’s getting into,” said a source with knowledge of Stanford and Duke, “because the programs are very different.”

During its 2 1/2-week search, Stanford either backed off, or was spurned by, more than a dozens candidates, including Larry Brown, Nevada’s Mark Fox, Gonzaga’s Mark Few and Davidson’s Bob McKillop.

In the end, it came down to Dawkins, Stanford assistant Doug Oliver and Portland Coach Eric Reveno, who played and coached at Stanford.

The selection of Dawkins did not receive unanimous approval, especially among some Stanford insiders frustrated that Bowlsby did not retain Johnson, who has taken two programs to the Sweet 16 in the past five years.

Of Saturday’s news, a source close to the athletic department said: “It’s an attempt to be a face-saving end to a tragic set of circumstances that Bowlsby created.”

Dawkins will take over a program expected to backslide next season without 7-footers Brook and Robin Lopez, who left Stanford this spring for the NBA.

Even with point guard Mitch Johnson, wing Anthony Goods and forward Lawrence Hill returning, the Cardinal will be picked to finish closer to the bottom of the Pac-10 than the top.

But for the moment, Dawkins’s focus must be on recruiting and retaining the players who signed last fall. Miles Plumlee, a 6-10 forward from North Carolina, has reportedly asked for release from his letter of intent. Stanford will have at least five scholarships available for the November signing period.

Darren Sabedra is a sports reporter and the high school sports editor, overseeing prep coverage throughout the Bay Area. He's been with the Bay Area News Group since the early 1990s and has covered many sports beats, including Stanford football and basketball, pro baseball and the NFL.

Jon Wilner has been covering college sports for decades and is an AP top-25 football and basketball voter as well as a Heisman Trophy voter. He was named Beat Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Football Writers Association of America for his coverage of the Pac-12, won first place for feature writing in 2016 in the Associated Press Sports Editors writing contest and is a five-time APSE honoree.